Tea Party Sheriff Calls For ‘Pitchforks And Torches’ In Response To Marriage Equality Ruling

Milwaukee County sheriff and Tea Party hero David Clarke has a new radio show on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze network, and naturally used the July 4th episode to explain how the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling was just the sort of thing that inspired the Declaration of Independence and so should inspire a new “revolution” complete with “pitchforks and torches.”

“If you call yourself an American, then you have to start a revolution in this country after what happened last week at the United States Supreme Court,” Clarke told his listeners. “If you believe in the concept of self-rule, representative democracy, limited government, then you have no choice at the very least to be part of a revolution that’s going to be necessary to get this country back.”

“Yes, pitchforks and torches,” he insisted, explaining that Washignton can’t be fixed so “you have to deconstruct it.”

Clarke went on to explain the various ways in which he believes that President Obama and the Supreme Court are embodying complaints found in the Declaration of Independent, including “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent” (“when John Roberts said that Obamacare was a tax, he imposed a tax on us without our consent”); “declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever” (the marriage equality ruling); “abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province” (Obama’s executive action on immigration); and “excit[ing] domestic insurrections amongst us” (the gay marriage decision, the “fictitious war on women” and “pitting blacks against whites, pitting the rich against the poor”).

“King Obama,” he said, ignored the 2014 election results, and now it’s time for revolution, which he explained should start by defending businesses that discriminate against gay people.

“The next time in your state the federal government tries to put a church or a bakery or a pizza place out of business because they want to live by their religious conviction,” he said, “when I talk about pitchforks and torches, you need to get down there, surround that business and dare the federal government to come in and close it. That’s the revolution I’m talking about, it has to start in the states.”